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It’s almost as if Apple were in a different business than Dell (DELL), HP (HPQ), Acer and Toshiba. Helloooooo! DELL, HP, Acer and Toshiba are in the ruthless b

It’s almost as if Apple were in a different business than Dell (DELL), HP (HPQ), Acer and Toshiba. Helloooooo! DELL, HP, Acer and Toshiba are in the ruthless business of trying to cut their margins thinner and thinner with fewer and fewer opportunities to differentiate their products while they acts as collectors for the Windows Tax. Apple is indeed in a different business, a business based on differentiation and branding.

anamax 18y ago
> Helloooooo! DELL, HP, Acer and Toshiba are in the ruthless business of trying to cut their margins thinner and thinner with fewer and fewer opportunities to differentiate their products while they acts as collectors for the Windows Tax. Umm, no. They're in the biz of trying to increase their margins. Differentiation is one way that they try to do it. Customers are in the biz of trying to decrease said companies' prices. One way to cut prices is for said companies to cut their margins. Currently customers are winning. Never confuse the outcome of an interaction with the intent of one of the parties.
- raganwald 18y ago
  Well, DELL has made much of using supply-chain optimization to make more money on lower net margins. If HP, Acer, and Toshiba are working to differentiate their products from each other, I think they need to work harder. And I speak as someone whose last PC was a Toshiba.
netcan 18y ago
That would be different companies. With different strategies.
mynameishere 18y ago
based on differentiation and branding Heh. You obviously don't go to the dell website very often. They spend an inordinate amount of time trying to brand and differentiate various product configurations. It can be literally 5, 6, 7 sets of pages before you get to the "buy now" button. Of course, it's all just CPU type + Memory Size + Hard Drive Size + Windows variant in the end, but they really, really try.
cosmo7 18y ago
HP is the odd one out. HP sees the future in services, just like IBM. They're fattening (ie: media-ing) up their consumer products to sell off their entire PC line in the next 3 or 4 years.
- raganwald 18y ago
  I'd say they're the ones that realize there's now future tilling Microsoft's fields.

anamax 18y ago

> Helloooooo! DELL, HP, Acer and Toshiba are in the ruthless business of trying to cut their margins thinner and thinner with fewer and fewer opportunities to differentiate their products while they acts as collectors for the Windows Tax. Umm, no. They're in the biz of trying to increase their margins. Differentiation is one way that they try to do it. Customers are in the biz of trying to decrease said companies' prices. One way to cut prices is for said companies to cut their margins. Currently customers are winning. Never confuse the outcome of an interaction with the intent of one of the parties.

raganwald 18y ago
Well, DELL has made much of using supply-chain optimization to make more money on lower net margins. If HP, Acer, and Toshiba are working to differentiate their products from each other, I think they need to work harder. And I speak as someone whose last PC was a Toshiba.

netcan 18y ago

That would be different companies. With different strategies.

mynameishere 18y ago

based on differentiation and branding Heh. You obviously don't go to the dell website very often. They spend an inordinate amount of time trying to brand and differentiate various product configurations. It can be literally 5, 6, 7 sets of pages before you get to the "buy now" button. Of course, it's all just CPU type + Memory Size + Hard Drive Size + Windows variant in the end, but they really, really try.

cosmo7 18y ago

HP is the odd one out. HP sees the future in services, just like IBM. They're fattening (ie: media-ing) up their consumer products to sell off their entire PC line in the next 3 or 4 years.

raganwald 18y ago
I'd say they're the ones that realize there's now future tilling Microsoft's fields.